


Acheron (The Following a River Remix)

by neveralarch



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-22
Updated: 2011-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ace is looking for a purpose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acheron (The Following a River Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [livii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livii/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Whitsunday](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3016) by livii. 



> Betaed by the excellent aralias.

The motorcycle stutters and gasps, then roars, and Ace is somewhere else. She combs an idle hand through her hair as she looks around, holding the bike steady with her other hand. Earth, definitely. Pre-industrial, pretty early on. There’s a village or a town in the distance and no readily apparent alien attackers. Ace hums the chorus of a song that’s been stuck in her head since the nineteenth century, and gets ready to make another jump.

"You should really wear a helmet," calls a voice. Ace turns and sees a blonde woman wearing a long toga-like dress. "You can die on those things. I watched vids about them when I was young."

"Where would that be, then?" asks Ace.

"Oh, the 25th century," says the woman. "I'm Vicki. Did the Doctor send you?"

"No," says Ace, flatly. Her wounds have healed, or scarred, anyway, and they don't want reopening. "Are you one of his?"

"I used to be," says Vicki, her voice turning careful again. "It's all right, I didn't need anything. I'm fine. It would just be nice to see him again."

"Careful what you wish for," mutters Ace. She pumps the throttle, enjoying the wasteful sound that spews forth as the engine shudders and turns over. "Listen, I'll give you a lift somewhere if you like, but I'm not really interested in hanging around to chat. You want to go home?"

"What are you, the time traveling transport service? You’re very sweet, but I'm fine," repeats Vicki with a smile. "You go on."

"Right," says Ace, and skids on the rough pavement of a road designed for oxen and wooden wheels. She feels a little bad for rushing off so fast, so she calls over her shoulder, "I'll do something about the helmet!"

Vicki's laugh propels her into the void again.

Ace breathes in, and out, wondering again how she can even get air in this place, and why it tastes so perfect and clean.

\---

When Ace left the Professor, she was determined to become a great righter of wrongs, a champion of the oppressed. She was sick of secrets, and plans, and not interfering with history. When she saw something bad, she would stop it and that was that. She might have gotten the idea from Marx, or from the Brothers Grimm. Ace read a lot on the TARDIS, toward the end.

But instead of playing hero, she just wanders through space and time, jumping whenever it seems like she might be called on to interfere. She can't decide what counts as wrong or right anymore.

Ace can feel her old self atrophying, and it's a type of change, but it's the type of change that means her old self will be dead and she's always had a loathing of the living dead. She stocks up on cockiness and explosives, but none of it feels right. Ace is giving way to the junior Doctor she was training to be.

If nothing else, she can't, she won't be as aimless as her predecessor. At the least she can have a purpose.

When Ace finally gets a helmet, she goes ahead and gets two.

\---

She feels drawn to people who were with the Doctor. Literally drawn, like the motorcycle can't resist their pull. Maybe there's something wrong with the temporal stabilizer, and maybe the chronal energy of time traveling makes, hm, a dent in the fabric of time, and the bike gets drawn in.

Ace hates when she thinks in the Professor's voice, but sometimes she can't help it.

They're nice people, though, by and large. She doesn't mind giving them a hand when she can.

There's a young woman on an English beach, with a posh accent and beautiful wide eyes, who needs a lift back to Victorian times.

"I don't know if I really want to go back," she says, tearfully. "There's no one there for me, and I have become used to this time, but I just- I don't _belong_ -"

"Who does?" says Ace. The wise cryptic thing can be overplayed, but she likes it, and it looks like it gets Victoria thinking. "Hey, why don't we just take a ride to a proper beach instead?" she tosses Victoria the helmet with a disdainful look at the rocks and green seaweed washing up from the surf. "I think all you need is a holiday."

"Where were you thinking of? Brighton?" asks Victoria, slowly snapping the helmet to her head with the learned cautiousness of the ultimate early adopter.

"What about Mykonos Island?" says Ace. She's developed a taste for Greece, and Victoria's laugh says she agrees.

\---

Ace is a ferryman now, with her motorbike and her helmets and a succession of displaced people to look after. She read a book a long time ago, about Classical myths and death and the underworld and Charon and his boat. It hadn't had much of an impact back then, when she didn’t think she had time to care about fairytales. When only aliens and explosives held any fascination. But she thinks about it now and again, and she only takes up people who have the coin to pay for the ride.

Coin is a metaphor, obviously. She doesn't need money, or, well, sometimes she does. But she moves so much that the conversion rate would be a killer. She hasn't really decided what coin is a metaphor for, but she's definitely getting something out of all this.

There are many who stay where they were put, enough to make Ace question whether there's any use for her. Peladon's new queen tells her to take a hike, for one, and the penguin guy says he's too busy solving crimes the first time, and too busy running a bar the next. She even goes back for Vicki once, not really on purpose. She just sends Ace away again with a smile and a shake of the head.

Ace would admire their ability to make good with what they've got if it didn't look so dead boring. At least Krontep's queen takes the ride home, complaining about some guy named Yracnos the whole way.

Peri offers Ace a place to stay for a while, in America, but Ace shakes her head and jumps back into the vortex. She is following a river, and it doesn't stay on the surface for long.

\---

Ace meets people who remember the Doctor and people who don't, but should. She's never sure what to do in that last case, but she tends to err on the side of giving them their own fucking memories back. It takes a lot of work and a lot of frequently-illegal technology, but she can’t just leave anyone missing parts of their own selves. She is the ferryman, and she's pretty sure the River Lethe and the River Styx were two separate things, but she can't be blamed for mixing mythology when she's riding a time-motorcycle.

There's a clever temp with bright red hair who shouts with anger when she remembers what's happened to her, and there's a middle-aged Scotsman who asks so many questions about the Doctor without ever noticing that he’s crying.

Both of them make Ace uncomfortable, and she leaves them to themselves before too long. She can’t hang around once the journey is over.

\---

When Ace meets Tegan for the first time, Tegan’s already met Ace. The taste of temporal inconsistency is like a coin lying heavy on her tongue. Ace swallows and grins around the metal.

Ace likes the way Tegan’s so sure of herself, even in her confusion. They don’t know each other, not quite, but Tegan, at least, knows her own self. It’s nice to have that solidity at her back. Tegan likes Ace as well, for some reason, and Ace wonders what she's done to impress this woman, with her lovely bright anger and her flashing eyes. She'd better watch out so she can do it again, when the time comes.

Tegan's expecting something. It's in the way she cocks her hips and walks straight to the bike without asking. She's even got her own helmet which looks suspiciously similar to the second helmet Ace keeps strapped to the side of the bike. But she doesn’t ask questions and Ace manages to get Tegan all the way to ancient Mars before it becomes obvious that she'll have to say something.

"We'll get it right next time," says Ace, off-hand and wishing they were in sync this time as well. She dodges Tegan's questions, not knowing what her future has hidden or given away.

They stand in front of the lake of what will be called the Erebus crater, and Ace can see past and future spinning out in front of her. It’s probably the temporal inconsistency interfering with her chronal perceptions, already made unstable by her frequent and barely-protected trips through the vortex, and no, she wanted to stop thinking like that.

The blue wet planet of today melts into the red planet from the pictures of her childhood, and Ace's breath catches in her throat. Tegan can’t see it, but it’s happened because of her and it’s beautiful.

"I like Australia," she says, sweeping an arm at the not-red expanses before her. ‘Thank you,’ she means, and ‘I’ll come back,’ but she’s swept up and spinning and being cryptic is familiar.

Tegan laughs, the sound tight and confused and jarring. Ace looks back at her and falls into the timestream again, the reality of the water around her reasserting itself.

She's been traveling too much, maybe, cut loose without a dock to call home. But she's working out what she gets from this, what she needs from this, and Tegan's one of those things.

\---

The next time she runs into the Doctor's people, there's a whole pile of them, all gathered together to fight some big monster. Mickey and Martha, apparently freelance alien fighters, though they have something to do with UNIT as well. Sarah Jane Smith and her bunch of kids. Some guy named Jack, who leers and cracks jokes but stops as soon as Ace tells him that she's definitely not interested.

They were hoping for the Doctor, not a ferryman. They need help getting rid of an apocalypse in Sontaran form, not a quick ride back home or a break from living in the wrong time. Or if they did want a ride – Jack looks in longing at the bike, once or twice – they’re far too busy to take it.

Ace doesn't miss the disappointment on their faces, though they try hard to hide it.

There was a time when doubt would have made her angry or careless. But she's been dipped in the eddies of time now, and she's more or less invulnerable.

"You're in luck," she says, calmly. "I've got a lot of experience in getting rid of invasion forces."

And bless them, they never stop to ask where from.

\---

She meets the Master, twice.

The first time he smiles at her, new teeth gleaming in a new body, and gives her a set of coordinates before winking away. The copper-tin alloy taste of temporal inconsistency is rising like bile in Ace's mouth, so she bites her tongue and says nothing. There will be meaning. She has time to wait.

The second time he's still on the Cheetah planet she and the Doctor had left him on, the virus burning from his blood as the planet breaks apart. Ace thinks about leaving him.

A paradox, though, is a hard thing to deal with, and the Master had definitely been alive when she met him last. Ace growls with frustration and just drags the Master onto the bike as he snarls and scratches. He doesn't get a helmet. She dumps him at the coordinates he gave her some years before, and takes comfort in the fact that she's left him with a bunch of Daleks.

\---

On a planet that looks like hell, there's a man that carries the dead with him. He’s everywhere and nowhere and there’s an old fresh pain in his reptilian eyes.

Ace suddenly feels as if the metaphor has gone too far.

"Who are you?" he snarls, and Ace only feels a little silly when she says, "The ferryman."

"I don't understand," says the man, a whine in the back of his throat. "I don't understand, this is wrong. Are you here for me to save you?"

"You've got it the wrong way 'round," says Ace. "Look, do you have a-" her voice stumbles over 'doctor' and she settles on "therapist or something? I think you might need one."

"You're one of _his_ ," says the man, and he reaches for her. "I can see it in your eyes. Piercing blue-gray eyes-"

Ace darts away and the bike roars. The last thing she thinks before she's back in the calm of the vortex is that her eyes have always been brown.

She thinks about checking in a mirror, but in the end she just picks up a pair of sunglasses instead.

\---

Ace has the sunglasses on when she gets to meet Tegan for the proper first time. It’s been years since the last time since she saw Tegan, hard years, and Ace feels immeasurably older.

In comparison, colorful Tegan, standing on one foot and poking at a blister on her heel, seems so young. The bike roars up, and she startles, a little.

"You don't look one for walking," says Ace, but the words are lost in the engine humming into idle. She speaks a little louder for the next. "You coming or what?" She pushes up her shades - Tegan's already seen her eyes.

"That thing looks like a death trap," says Tegan, and Ace grins at her reluctance.

"What do you think the helmets are for?" she says. "It's a taxi service, and you look like you need it."

"I haven't any money," says Tegan, pushing at every corner, every place where Ace could take advantage. "I can't pay you."

"No charge," says Ace, which is a lie, more so in this case than in any other.

She gives Tegan the helmet, doesn't take it back when she drops her off. They're going to see each other again.

If there's one thing she's learning, it's when to get attached.

"I don't even know who you are!" calls Tegan as Ace gets ready to leave. Her voice is annoyed, not confused, not frightened, and Ace smiles.

"We've crossed the River Styx, Tegan," she says. "And I need companions to keep oblivion at bay."

The cold of the vortex washes over her, but doesn't touch her. She is truly invulnerable at last.

\---

Tegan is a touchpoint, a stone in the river that Ace can fetch up against. She has strength in the face of her changes, now.

She still feels like she's turning into the Doctor, strangely, slowly. She isn't him, she's a facsimile of him, and she can't shake his imprint. But sometimes a copy is as good as the real thing. Better, even.

She thinks about going and finding another lost friend to save, but instead she jumps ahead and helps Tegan defeat an alien invasion.

It's loud and bloody and terrifying and Ace knows she's still herself when all she can do is laugh until there are tears in her eyes. Or even though there are tears in her eyes.

But the aliens are gone and the humans are off licking their many wounds, and Tegan launches herself into Ace's arms.

"God, we did it, we did it-" Tegan stops, her mouth wanting to shape a name, but Ace hasn't given her that token yet.

"Ace," she gasps, still breathless and shuddering from the laughing and the pushed-back sobs.

"Nice meeting you," says Tegan. She laughs, but she wipes at her eyes at the same time, and the connection of the movement makes Ace love her.

"We won, Tegan," she says, and cleans Tegan's wounds. With her handkerchief, and her mouth.

"Who _are_ you?" asks Tegan, properly this time.

"I'm your ferryman," says Ace, truth flooding into the worn words. She kisses Tegan and tastes blood in her mouth.

\---

She doesn't stay. She can't stay. She's always running from one bank to the other.

She's been moving too long to be happy in one place, and she wouldn't inflict her restlessness on anyone else.

\---

She picks up a man from a planet he hardly belongs to, and drops him off again in a time he can't call home. He says it's good enough, anyway, and Ace tries not to compare her navigation skills with anyone else’s. She gets him drunk, and he talks about a panda bear that he loved as his only friend and rescued from flames and left with the Doctor long ago.

There are different kinds of tolls. Usually the ones the Professor takes don't seem so corporeal.

Ace hopes the people who come after her don't find bits of her lying around the TARDIS. She hopes the people who come after her know she was there.

She hopes to God that people come after her.

\---

The Doctor has long hair and a velvet coat now and he's just as hard as he ever was underneath all the daintiness. Ace glares at him and doesn't call him Professor, even if his eyes are still blue-gray.

"I was just checking up on Fitz," says the Doctor. His fingers tap at each other, and he stares at them as if they aren't a part of him. He's been like that since Ace knocked his hand away when he touched her shoulder.

"So was I," says Ace, shortly.

"The Ferryman," says the Doctor, and Ace hears the capital click into place. "I've heard stories about you, you know-"

"I'm sure you have," says Ace, and strides away to her bike. She can't deal with this, not now.

"I've been to Charon," says the Doctor, following her. "It's a lovely moon. Or not-moon, as the case may be. It's a nice place, anyway."

"It's an airless rock covered in ice," says Ace. "Don't try to compare me with it."

"I was just making conversation," says the Doctor, quietly wounded. "I was going to say, I wouldn't mind going back there again."

The words hover in the air, a peace offering, or a prelude to one. It's a tentative beam of light trying to re-illumine what they once had.

But Ace is the daughter of darkness and night, and she doesn't need the sun breaking its way in.

"I haven't got a second helmet, not anymore," says Ace, at last. "Not safe for you to ride along."

She throws her leg over the bike and kicks off while the Doctor ponders the layers of meaning.

\---

She jumps from star to star, not really paying attention to where she's going. She doesn't even really bother to do her job. Who says it's her job, anyway? Her? The Doctor? That Vicki woman?

Ace McShane, reduced to a glorified taxi service, cleaning up one man's messes. If anything, those scattered and lost people out there should be his responsibility.

She takes a year-long break to free a planet from tyrants, and it only makes her feel more like him.

\---

The next jump takes her into Tegan's kitchen, through some combination of carelessness and misjudgment, and tiles skid out from under the squeal of the brakes.

"I can fix that," says Ace into the brief vacuum of horrified silence.

"You had damn well better," says Tegan, her hands on her hips, her chin tilted up.

"You making something?" asks Ace, and she swings off the bike, leaning it casually against the kitchen table. "I'm starving."

"There's not enough for two," says Tegan, her mouth in a weird tangle of too many emotions. Ace ignores it and starts rummaging around the cupboards, finding enough rice and things to stretch any dish. She chatters as she goes, and Tegan slowly, slowly starts to open up. Soon they're laughing at each other as they sit at the table. Tegan doesn't even complain about having to move around the bike. Well, she does, but it's amiable, anyway.

"You're so like him," she says, as they're washing up. "The Doctor always was a charmer, though don't tell him that."

Ace freezes. She's been thinking that so long, but hearing it from someone else, from _Tegan_ is like-

Well, it's a bloody great relief, actually.

"I picked up some things in my time," she says, and it actually sounds calm. "We met when I was quite young, you know?"

They talk about the Doctor, and then they talk about other things, and the bitterness washes away.

\---

Later that night, they're huddled up in bed together, and Ace still can't get over how easy it was. Just like that, acceptance pushing away her nursed resentment.

"I was in its jaws, its teeth," she says, breathing it across Tegan's skin. "You pulled me out."

"I didn't do anything," says Tegan, voice snapping with the unwillingness to take credit for anything she didn't do with every ounce of her strength.

"You're so alive," laughs Ace, and kisses her again. "You're so free."

"What does that even mean?" says Tegan, and it's earnest and not metaphysical at all, and Ace isn't living in her own head any more.

\---

Ace gets up early the next morning, leaves Tegan still sleeping. She moves the motorcycle out into the backyard and starts setting the tiles back into places, throwing away the completely shattered ones. She can’t fix everything without the proper tools, but at the least she can make it safe until Tegan can call a repairman or something.

It’s a good philosophy, maybe. Make things as right as you can before you go.

Tegan pads softly across the floor, barefoot and careful.

“You’re going,” she says.

“Afraid so,” says Ace. She straightens up and dusts off her knees, runs a hand through her hair.

“Where are you going?” asks Tegan. "Tell me."

Ace mulls it over. She wants to go and find Vicki, tell her that things have worked out. She wants to find the Professor and shake his hand, give him the proper goodbye they never shared. She wants to stay here and fix the floor properly. She could say something cryptic again, but for once she wants to give Tegan a straight answer.

“Wherever the bike takes me,” she says, shrugging. “I’m needed, out there.”

There are more hours spent in that kitchen, but in the end Tegan sends Ace off with a smile.

\---

Ace doesn't go back. She wants to, but she can tell when time is up. No sense pushing it when they both have their own lives to lead.

The motorcycle makes the happy thrum of a well-cared for engine, and Ace roars into existence near a river on a planet she doesn’t recognize.

There's a man wearing what looks like the tattered remains of a school uniform, running from a group of people with laser guns. He's gasping on his last breath as he dives behind the motorcycle. Ace crouches down beside him, listening to the bolts bounce off the plating of her bike.

"Who are you?" pants the man, the red of his hair and the fever in his gaze muted by Ace's sunglasses.

"The Ferryman," says Ace, comfortably. "And you look like you need a ride."


End file.
